Song of the Week: Passion Pit, "Carried Away," Gossamer

Song of the Week: Passion Pit, "Carried Away," Gossamer

It's predictable, but dependable: The shortest, surest path to outrunning the sophomore slump is to double down on what you brought the first time. For Passion Pit, that's synthesizers piled upon synthesizers, a ridiculous number of synthesizers, as if they're chasing some kind of Guinness record for most synthesizers on a single track. If there's a guitar in here somewhere — and I'm not sure there is — it's probably just a synthesizer programmed to sound like one. Luckily, they've also doubled down on pop song craft, and if this isn't one of the bounciest sing-alongs of the year, it's definitely a last-minute contender for song of the summer.

Frank Ocean, "Super Rich Kids"

Frank Ocean, "Super Rich Kids"

Because searching out the male pronouns is so two weeks ago. What won't get old is wondering if this is what R. Kelly might sound like if he holed up for a week with a stack of Mother Jones back issues and started kicking out socioeconomic broadsides.